Food Crops

As part of the national dish of rice and beans, rice was the
Dominican Republic's most important food crop in the late 1980s.Rice
production expanded significantly in the post-Trujillo era, and by late
1979 the country had achieved self-sufficiency for the first time. Rice
production, however, waned in the 1980s, forcing renewed imports. In
1987 about 112,000 hectares yielded 320,000 tons of rice, an amount
inadequate to meet national demand, but well above the level of 210,000
tons in 1970.

Declines in production were related to a series of economic factors.
Rice subsidies to the urban poor, who enjoyed less than two kilograms of
rice a week as part of Inespre's food basket, or canasta popular,
were generally at odds with the goal of increased output. The
government's land reform measures also may have had a negative impact on
rice yields; IAD's rice holdings, which rendered 40 percent of the
nation's rice, were noticeably less productive than private rice
holdings. In the late 1980s, the government continued to involve itself
extensively in the rice industry by supplying irrigation systems to over
50 percent of rice farmers as well as technical support through the Rice
Research Center in Juma, near Bonao. The government also moved to
increase the efficiency of local distribution in 1987, when it
transferred rice marketing operations from Inespre to the Agricultural
Bank of the Dominican Republic (Banco Agrícola de la República
Dominicana--Bagricola) and then to the private sector.

The other principal grains and cereals consumed in the Dominican
Republic included corn (or maize), sorghum, and imported wheat. Corn,
native to the island, performed better than many food crops in the 1980s
because of the robust growth of the poultry industry, which used 95
percent of the corn crop as animal feed. The strong demand for feed
notwithstanding, Inespre's low prices for corn and other distortions in
the local market caused by donated food from foreign sources decreased
incentives for farmers and reduced output during the late 1970s and the
early 1980s. As of 1987, corn covered 28,000 hectares, and it supplied
43,000 tons, an amount far below domestic needs. The cultivation of
sorghum, a drought-resistant crop also used as a feed, expanded rapidly
in the 1980s because of sorghum's suitability as a rotation crop on
winter vegetable farms and as a new crop on newly idle cane fields. An
estimated 16,000 hectares yielded 49,000 tons of sorghum in 1987, more
than double 1980's output of 23,000 tons. Wheat was another increasingly
important cereal because Dominicans were consuming ever-greater
quantities of the commodity, donated primarily by the United States and
France. As a result, the country's two mills were functioning at full
capacity in the late 1980s. The government was reluctant to do something
about Dominicans' preference for the heavily subsidized wheat over local
cereals for fear of violent protests by poorer consumers.

Other major food crops included starchy staples such as plantains and
an assortment of tubers. Dominicans consumed large quantities of
plantains, usually fried, because of their abundance, sweet taste, and
low cost. An estimated 31,000 hectares of trees produced 251,000 tons of
plantain in 1987. Peasants routinely cultivated and consumed root crops,
such as cassava, taro, sweet potatoes, and yams because they were cheap
and easy to cultivate. Production of these basic food crops did not fare
well in the late 1970s and the 1980s because of low government prices
and the exodus of population to the cities. Some 17,000 hectares sown
with cassava, the most common tuber, produced approximately 98,000 tons
of that crop in the late 1980s.

Beans, a dietary staple and the chief source of protein for many
Dominicans, were grown throughout the countryside. Although the country
was generally self-sufficient in the universally popular red bean,
shifts in output created the need to import some beans during the 1980s.
Red beans covered 57,000 hectares, yielding 39,000 tons, whereas black
beans were grown on only 9,000 hectares, yielding only 4,000 tons. Other
varieties generated even smaller harvests.